New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation. Here is New York, E.B.White, 1949 [Taschen, "365 Day-by-Day New York Calendar"]

Step 61 - Find Your Lifestyle
As I said in one of my recent posts – the world has changed and the way we live has changed. I honestly think it’s time to reevaluate some ideas and solutions about the life we want to l...

Do you even want to get married?
I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage recently (not about my own), because suddenly I spend a lot of time talking to married guys (just as friends). And I started to come...

Choose Your Own Relationship
I’m single so – naturally – I do think about guys and relationships. I’ve been thinking a lot of what type of a guy would actually make me want to be in a relationship. An...

What’s The Best Dating Advice?
There are plenty of advisors on the dating scene – there are videos and articles about every aspect of dating, with all these great pieces of advice: “What to do on a date,&rd...

Step 56 - Getting You Off The Hook.
I’ve done some thinking recently and tried to figure out the basic way people come up with an excuse. It’s a broad topic, but I’ve mostly experienced one response from variety o...

Williamsburg Is Over
Summer’s almost here, so I decided to take a walk in Williamsburg, and it just reassured me that… thinks are really over for this neighborhood. I moved to Greenpoint (a sister neighb...

Where is love?
Love has been on my mind recently (and probably has been unconsciously for a while now) and I started thinking about where to find it. I know it’s a pretty odd thing (...

Manhattan - The Island of Hope

The weirdest task you can possibly pose to a New Yorker is to ask her or him to describe Manhattan to you. It’s just about impossible to do that.

Manhattan is one of New York City’s five boroughs and trying to describe it is about as easy as describing the whole palette of colors available in PhotoShop. Manhattan is, first and foremost, huge. Every time I’m here I’m impressed by its enormity. What’s more, every part of it is different than all the others.

The West side of Manhattan is a bit livelier than the East side, but this division is slowly dissolving. One neighborhood can be as small as two streets or as large as a dozen blocks. The sizes differ (see the map below).

To make long story short (since I plan to devote separate posts to the various neighborhoods of Manhattan): Upper East Side is inhabited by so-called “old money”: people who grew up in circumstances much different than most of us did.

Hell’s Kitchen has been a teeming neighborhood in the past couple of years, rich in restaurants and gay clubs, catering to numerous gay residents. Gay populace also took over Chelsea, one of the most fashionable neighborhoods, where rents are high and beautiful people roam the streets. Greenwich Village, on the other hand, is a neighborhood of mostly rich, artistically-inclined people (many stars live here) and of picturesque streets. Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca are all very expensive neighborhoods, with rents amounting to small fortunes. Currently the city administration is working to develop Midtown. East Village is definitely bohemian – it’s here that you meet the less-than-wealthy artists and the vibe of “old Manhattan” – both shabby and special – is definitely felt. Litle Italy and Nolita are becoming more and more expensive, with a proliferation of boutiques and fashionable places. In Lower Manhattan, at the Financial District, there’s Wall Street and what used to be the World Trade Center. That’s where you can get the best view of Statue of Liberty, the very symbol of hope for many generations of people reaching the New World over the decades. Along Manhattan, there’s Hudson River, the banks of which is one of the favorite places for New Yorkers to jog.

The basic Manhattan division is between Uptown (anything above 72nd Street) and Downtown (anything below 14th). 14th Street is an important spot, crossing Union Square: the ultimate meeting point easily comparable to the cracovian Empik or “Rotunda” in Warsaw.

My signature walk starts at the tip of Lower Manhattan, at Battery Park, and ends all the way up at 100th street. It takes about five hours and sticks to the longest of avenues: Broadway. Don’t forget: there are twelve avenues and more than 100 streets, not counting all the ones that don’t have numbers in their names. Once you walked through all the streets of Manhattan, you can safely say you got to know the city. Get yourself a pair of comfy walking shoes and start your adventure!

How to find your way in Manhattan and why is it impossible to get lost here? See here.

Your comments

Love it Dagmara. But I don't agree that the West Side is livelier (That is what us New Yorkers do - disagree with everything). I think the only "real" (hip, cool) parts of New York left are the Lower East Side and the East village. I think it's more uptown boring, down town lively, but I am an old, bitter, angry New Yorker (been here 14 years) so I know too much. For someone new to the city you have got it figured pretty well. And the thing is, its always changing so lots to write about. Congrats on the blog and knock 'em dead Dagmara!!!